AMOLINA
by soldier against the numbers
Summary: She was the motherland. ― Philippines/Jose Rizal, slight Philippines/America.


**Summary:** She was the motherland. ― Philippines/Jose Rizal, slight Philippines/America.

**Note:** I AM HALF-ASSING THIS. DON'T TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY. ALL I WANTED TO DO WAS ADD TO RIZAL'S PIMP STATUS OR SOMETHING TO THAT EFFECT.

...And do something to calm my patriotist feels.

**Note:** OOHH GAWD please look at _gloriana_ and _the widow capet_ by sarsaparillia. My hero indeed. PLEASE LOOK BECAUSE I WOULDN'T HAVE GOTTEN THIS IDEA WITHOUT HER.

**Note: **OH MY GOD I LOVE YOU PRUSSIA (as of episode World Series 39)

**Anime Crack:** Hetalia World Series, Hetalia the Beautiful World, Hetalia season-by-season bloopers

* * *

**AMOLINA**

* * *

_Land of the morning,_

_Child of the sun returning,_

_With fervor burning,_

_Thee do our souls adore._

_Land dear and holy,_

_Cradle of noble heroes,_

_Ne'er shall invaders_

_Trample thy sacred shore._

_Ever within thy skies and through thy clouds_

_And o'er thy hills and sea,_

_Do we behold the radiance, feel and throb,_

_Of glorious liberty._

_Thy banner, dear to all our hearts,_

_Its sun and stars alight,_

_O never shall its shining field_

_Be dimmed by tyrant's might!_

_Beautiful land of love, o land of light,_

_In thine embrace 'tis rapture to lie,_

_But it is glory ever, when thou art wronged,_

_For us, thy sons to suffer and die._

―The English Version of the Philippine National Anthem, Translated by: Camilo Osias and A.L. Lane

* * *

For once, she held no hostility to the foreigner in front of her. Whereas she wanted to stick her blade into his companions' necks, sever their heads and feed them to the fish, he was welcomed differently. For some reason which escaped even _her,_ and she was the only one who objected to the murder-first ask-questions-later-though-nobody's-going-to-answe r approach.

He called himself Spain, but he insisted she call him Antonio because his full name was too confusing for her to say on a whim.

"Now will you please not try to kill my companions while we strike up a deal with your leader?"

She huffed and put away her spear and dagger. The warriors behind her did the same, reluctantly. It was almost laughable―strong warriors, led by a little girl who could barely reach height requirements for the standard spear.

By sunset, a blood compact had been made and an alliance was made by Datu Sikatuna and Miguel Lopez de Legazpi.

"See, now that wasn't so bad now was it?" Then, "Would you like a tomato?"

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.

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They named her Felipinas, and she grew as they abused her people.

Lashes, raping, hunger, blood, tears, wounds, death. That was all she could see, all she could remember. She wanted to destroy them―those demons―wanted to take their tobacco-stained smiles and paint them over with blood, take their pale skin and squeeze their throats and make it paler, take their riches and throw them over her lands. Wanted to watch them die as they watched her children die.

She wanted nothing of this.

This wasn't what Antonio promised her.

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She watched the legendary Gomburza up front, watched firm, strong, willing priests be taken by the garote.

She still didn't believe in God, not even after the bodies were taken away to who-knows-where.

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23rd of August 1896, and she felt it.

She was nowhere near there, but she felt their determination. Felt it like an active volcano finally showing its true colors for the first time. Years later, she would still debate on whether it was pretty or not. She didn't particularly care at the time; she underestimated her own people's sentiments.

She asked the engkanto to watch over them, just in case. Just pray for them and keep a space in their hearts to remember to hope for the best for them. But news spread fast. Soon almost every creature was fighting for freedom.

She debated over whether this too was good or not. She didn't particularly care either, she realized as she witnessed the dalaketnon feeding a slew of abusive landholders a banquet of black rice.

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She was on the verge of becoming a woman in body when revolts began to break out on her lands.

The nuno succeeded in cursing anyone who was close enough, all of them not her people. Kapre blew much smoke into the air as much as possible. The aswang started to target those with fair skins. The dalaketnon fed their black rice to those unfortunate enough to stay near dalaket trees for too long. But they never did get satisfied. They attacked her people as well, so she slew those not faithful to them.

The names flew by. Diego Silang, Gabriela Silang, Tandang Sora, Apolinario Mabini, Andres Bonifacio, Marcelo H. Del Pilar...

And then there was Jose Rizal.

She could see his message loud and clear. He sent a message to the outside without them knowing. It amazed her: how foolish the colonizers were, to have not noticed. It was right in front of their noses. But then again, their minds must have been getting dull.

She saw him before. He was a fine specimen of a man in a black suit, a man of her lands, yet mixed in with_ them_. Yet at the same time, resisting them. She wanted to see more of this man, know more, because he was _special_ and she never knew any man as special as this one, not bright and loud, but measured, calculated, tactful. Graceful, that was it. Graceful.

More graceful than her in _any _dress the perverse friars would ever want to throw at her, those bastards.

She peeked around the corner. There he was, that man, Rizal. Jose Rizal. She felt the fanfare writhing around him, the Philippine hearts and souls bear him on their shoulders, though they weren't there. She did not quite believe in God yet, oh no, did not believe in miracles yet, because there were still monsters to negotiate with and conversations with plenty of spirits and creatures under her care.

She could feel immense hope around him, and she prayed a little prayer to share the hopes of her so-called mythical creatures.

He saw her then, and he took a long, sweeping bow, hat to his chest, as though he recognized her. Lika an old friend.

Like his own mother.

She realized, then and there, that she was a woman, that he was bowing to her and no one else, and that she wasn't wearing a skirt.

She bowed. Not curtseyed. Because curtseying was for the weak, useless women who did nothing but sit on skirts and gossip all day behind pretty painted fans.

She was everything but.

"How is the motherland?" he asked her.

.

She saw the papers; she bought them, because she knows her people when she sees their words on paper.

La Liga Filipina.

She blushed like a pristine girl confronted with a promising marriage candidate, one she absolutely wanted to get at any cost. This was her people talking; she wanted to listen. At this time, she believed in God, but only for the people she loved so, so much.

She heard Jose's words, she heard the words of her people, and she'd read them late into the night. Like a twisted version of the damsel in distress.

She hid away the papers in her clothesdrawers, and kept them there long after they became more than just a sheaf.

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He was on a roll, and they hated him for it.

She came home. Nothing was of paticular interest. Nothing at all except for him. His fires still burned. Brighter now, because he was close to his main source of power.

She thought there would be guards. Oh well.

"I like how you write."

He looked up. She could see faint shadows, traces of fear etched into his skin, and who wouldn't walk away without scratches? The world was a bad place.

But he smiled, and he grew immensely brighter.

She blushed.

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The door slammed, taking any chance of momentous peace with them and spitting it out onto the street.

She flinched.

He sat there, knitted fingers at his lips. Unmoving. She worried.

"Jose..."

No answer. She suspected as much.

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It was one of the first times she was infuriated with her people, the other being with him and Josephine Bracken.

She was held back by the fair-skinned, and she almost screamed for her engkanto and her kapre and her aswang.

...but they never came.

They never came back to her.

She left them, and they did the same.

The gunshots rang out, and she cursed Him for the very first time.

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"He would love this. Oh, how he would _love_ this.

Philippines picked up the finished product of the hands of Filipino women. Blue side-by-side with red, a white triangle to the side, and on that a sun and three stars positively _shining_ in the sunlight.

"I know he would," Delfina Herbosa de Natividad said, and as cousin to the late Jose Rizal, she meant what she said.

Philippines' face fell, but quickly came back again; there was no use bringing up the past. It was time to move.

"Who will fly these colors?"

Marcela Marino de Agoncilio smiled with beautiful lips and shapely white teeth. "Don't worry, iha. That's sure to be taken care of." Young Lorenza de Agoncilio took the flag from Philippines' hands and set it on the dining table to air it out.

"Well, I want to be there when they fly. It is, after all, my country."

"Best be prepared to go, then. I heard they unfurl at Kawit."

.

_Can you see this, Jose?_

She cheered till there was no voice in her left to cheer with. Then she took deep breaths and cheered again. She left her lungs in tatters that day, and continued to do so with all the spirit of celebration flooding her body.

Her people were so full of happiness.

_Can you see this? It's hard to look away now. They're shining, so bright__―__they're as bright as you when you lived._

She allowed herself to be swept off her feet, to be dizzyingly whirled round and round in another man's arms. She stumbled, her arm in his, and the next day she wonders whether she kissed him or not.

_All is well for the night, old friend. All is well._

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It was a bad time to be known as a woman. With all the fights breaking out, she wanted to wade into the bloodshed, pick up a gun and shoot to her heart's delight.

Even over at Tirad Pass, she couldn't. People _knew_ her now; the Spaniards had it out for her. She couldn't run to her engkanto―she was too deep in patriotic love that she couldn't leave without attracting attention. Her people made it a point to swarm her with everyday talk, with plans for battle, and some even asked for her hand.

_Those_ transactions never ended on a happy note.

There was one, though, who she wouldn't mind asking... but he was long gone.

And then came another.

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He had pale skin, pale like them, but he didn't seem like them. His movements were too free. He was too loud.

He was _perfect_.

She peered at him through a white fan. She saw him dressed in garb a bit different from the traders of his homeland. He played with the little children on the street, the ones mischievous enough to run away from their mothers and want to poke fun at this strange man.

She wished she was young again.

She folded up her fan and tapped it against her palm. "That should be enough. Children, go back to your mothers―it is getting late."

The children stopped to look at her. They beamed at her, with crooked smiles and incomplete smiles and yellowing smiles. "Yes, Auntie." Soon it was just her and him and a darkening skyline.

"Where are you from, Señor?"

He looked at her. His eyes were blue. Like the sky. "Oh, me? I'm from America. I came here on a little side trip."

"I see." There was a pause where she kept stealing glances at the man. He was dressed formally, not like the Spaniards, now that she looked more closely.

She opened her mouth to get his name.

"―Juanita! _Juanita!_"

She buried her face in her fan. She hoped she could have evaded them. She_ hoped_.

The American looked at her.

She got up, curtseyed. "I must leave now."

As she ran, she could hear him asking her to wait.

"I'll come back to see you tomorrow!" she yelled over her shoulder as she ran to her company. She then blanched. "I-if you wish so!" she added, and soon she found herself outrunning her her overzealous children.

She wondered why she'd said that in the first place.

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"Good morning."

"G'morning."

She hid pink behind a white fan.

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A gun at her face, a stone at the ready. Simple stalemate. But neither side could accept.

"I didn't know they allowed women to fight."

"They let Gabriela take her husband's place as leader. What makes you think they wouldn't go any farther than that?"

Gunshots rang out in the air. Men cried their comrades' names, their commands, warnings, _her_ name. His name, too.

"Nita."

She was silent. Her eyes were cold and hard; unlike the woman he met before. Alfred Jones had never seen such a change in a person since England...

She ducked under his arm, propelled a fist into his face.

―_NO._

The hit never connected. He retaliated; the butt of the gun hit her on the back of her head as she fell past. She hit the ground, but did not move.

"Get up, Nita."

She did not move. She didn't look like she had been breathing.

"Nita."

She did nothing.

"Nita."

Nothing.

"_Nita."_

Nothing at all.

"_Nita..."_

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"OPEN THE DOORS!"

Ferdinand Marcos sat on a swivel chair. It was a nice, velvet swivel chair, and it felt like it would swallow him up if he let it. He was never unhappy in the chair.

But maybe today, that would be proved false.

"OPEN THEM."

He could _hear _her.

"OPEN THEM NOW OR SO HELP ME―"

He got up, walked down a flight of stairs until he reached the lobby of the mansion. She was not a lady, that was for sure. Her elbow was in a suited man's gut, the other was in the grasp of another lackey. Her legs were very close to taking advantage of the weak spots on his men.

"_You."_

He was sure the kind of fire that glinted in her eyes was the same fire that was in the citizens' hearts.

"_You,"_ she growled, and Ferdinand found the front of his shirt in a balled-up fist.

"Yes."

She panted heavily. She must have run all the way here, hence the lack of any vehicles around the premises. And―as he looked down―in heels, too. Heaven only knew why women wore heels when it only served to make their feet ache.

"Leave us."

The staff stared at him as though he'd ordered everyone to wear a chicken suit and dance around a large bonfire like retarded children.

"Leave. _Now._"

They left.

Ferdinand was vaguely aware of the trembling hand at his shirt.

"I was there. I was _there,_" she breathed. She raised her head. "I was _there_, and he _died_." Her eyes lit up again.

"HE'S DEAD," she screamed into his face. Ferdinand wanted a box of tissues. The woman had lungs.

"Did you do it?"

Ferdinand stared boredly.

"_Did you do it."_

Stared.

She throttled him. "MARCOS, DID YOU KILL HIM."

Stared until he was still. She was crying. He took hold of her hand. Immediately she fell to her knees.

"Damn it, why? _Why?_ He was precious to everyone. He was _special_. Did you kill him? Tell me. Please tell me. Please. Please. _Please..."_

Ferdinand Marcos said nothing.

"Please say something..."

He let his country grieve for a lost man.

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"Yellow once used to mean 'jealousy'."

She looked at the people outside the limousine. She could see them, could see her name on their lips. Juanita. Pilipinas. Inang Bayan. And she could see there were no shortages of the late Ninoy Aquino's supporters.

"I believe those days are over." She smiled wistfully. "Long over."

Before she and Corazon Aquino departed, she said, "The days of hope begin today."

_._

_._

She picked a yellow rose from its barrel. She didn't bother smelling; they smelled like nothing at all. She rolled the stem between her fingers and thought.

"Hey! Hey, that's ten pesos a stem...―oh."

She looked at the shopkeeper, a large old woman in stained skirts.

"Pardon me, Mother―"

"My apologies." She pressed twenty pesos into the flower shop owner's fat grimy hands. She eyed a shimmering yellow strip―like tape, stationed along the railing above the barrels of yellow roses.

"Ma'am, may I...?"

"Oh, of course, of course! Free of cha―"

She pressed another ten into the shopkeeper's hands. She left the store holding a yellow rose tied in yellow ribbon, in the fashion Corazon Aquino had taken to shaping her symbols recently.

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"This seat taken?"

She looked up. It was him. He was smiling.

"...No." She looked down and cradled her face in knitted fingers.

"Nita?"

She heard the scraping of a chair. She heard his elbows hit the table. She still wouldn't look up.

"Nita. Look at me."

She breathed but did not raise her head.

"_Nita!"_

Startled, she looked up. His face was right there, in front of her. Blue eyes, blue like the sky. Like the sky when they died. Damn that sky. Damn it for not grieving.

"My heart is dead too."

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"Say, why do you let me in you house and do pretty much everything except for murder and stuff but not in the basement to take a quick peek?"

Philippines looked at him with the same stony eyes she'd had on the battlefield. Arguably, America was here for this. And for the basement. And for some time with her.

"Because I keep precious things down there. The ones I can never replace."

"Like what?"

"...Things."

"Like what?"

"I told you, things. Stuff. I can't let you near them," she added at the hopeful look on his face.

"Come on, Nita! Please?"

"No."

"Please?"

"No."

"_Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplea...se!"_

Philippines pried his arms off her skirt and went into the basement to retrieve a preserved aswang's head. "I am not letting you see any more."

"You're no fun."

"Shut up."

"Please, Nita? One last thing. The one you treasure the most. I won't hold it, if it makes you happy."

Eager to stop this before it got out of hand, Philippines took America to a table in the middle of the basement, where a black bowler hat was kept in a glass box.

"It's a dead man's hat," she whispered conspiratorically in Alfred's ear.

"Really? Cool!" he exclaims. Then, "Whose is it?"

"I loved him once. But he loved everyone else more."

And thus she shooed him out of the basement and dared him to eat dinuguan if he still wanted to stay.

* * *

**Note:** There's a legend of a man named Lam-ang. They say by the time he was born, he could walk upright and speak. He could fight at less than nine months. And he never took a bath until he was in his prime years. Naturally, the fish in the river died. All of them. Yeah, and he was resurrected by a rooster. I SWEAR I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP. I read the legend as a kid, and it's supported by Wikipedia.

**Note: **You do realize Rizal was a total charmer, in addition to being kind of hot, right?

**Note:** I still don't know whether it was Kawit, or Imus, or Cavite City they formally showed the flag.

**Note:** PHILIPPINES IS EVERYWHERE HUE HUE HUE

**Note:** Dinuguan is made out of pig's blood, among other things. Which is why I DON'T FUCKING EAT IT.

**To Capricious Cake:** Thanks, so much.


End file.
